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How the hell do I shoot the damn missiles? I can't seem to figure it out. Sometimes they fire on their own at the scouts, and sometimes they don't. It seems completely random. I hit the assigned keys to fire the missiles, and nothing! My expensive MiG-32 are being blown up left and right as they absolutely refuse to shoot anything. Don't even get me started on how fragile they are, sometimes one or two hits from a simple scout blows them sky high. Absolutely ridiculous.

So how do I fire the missiles. What keys do I use ect. ect. This game desperately needs documentation on basic controls.

Edit

It isn't just those fighters either, the starting ones also wont shoot. If they get close they use their guns automatically, but they still wont fire their missile. Unless some sort of random gerbil in space sends them the orders and they do. It seems completely random.

Edit2

I finally got the MiG 32 to fire, somehow. I guess the magic god of chaos decided to fire the missile. And... the fighter dodges. Shoots it down. Great. What the hell are these things used for? They seem incredibly crippled against anything. So much as sneeze in their direction and they will die. Meanwhile they seem to never shoot, and if they do most certainly never hit. Then they are sitting ducks.

I just wasted a lot of time researching junk didn't I?

Edited by Gamgee
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You have to be in range. If you're out of range of your target, and you click the missile icons while they're green, they turn red, right? And then when you're furiously clicking, the missiles sometimes launch, and sometimes they don't? All has to do with distance from the target.

Red = you just told your pilot not to shoot that missile even when there's an enemy in range. (You'll see why it's useful to conserve ammo later.)

Green = Missile will automatically launch as soon as the enemy is within range.

Green with a Red diamond = Missile was Red, but now you're in range and if you click this missile icon, it will be launched immediately.

As you mentioned, the enemy fighters dodge. Try sending one missile out as soon as your at range, and hitting the target with a combined burst of fire from a couple of fighters simultaneously while the target's barrel-roll ability is cooling down.

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So how do I fire the missiles. What keys do I use ect. ect. This game desperately needs documentation on basic controls.

There is documentation on basic controls: http://www.xenonauts.com/manual.html

Found in this post in the thread "Xenonauts manual"

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/1492-Xenonauts-Manual?p=18533&viewfull=1#post18533

Are you sending the MiGs out alone or in wings together with your F-16s?

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So that explains why I haven't found any wrecks. Over killing them. Also I kept putting my missiles to red... talk about a troll. Okay now to experience so much more of the game. Thanks guys. Helpful forum here, quick too. I may be back in the near future, I've never played a game like this in my life. Though it is fun.

Edit

How can I tell if a missile is in range?

Edited by Gamgee
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Been a while since I played that's why. Maybe it was something about the missile icons. They could be yellow iirc? Maybe that has changed though. Oktober mentions a red diamond?

Been playing the v10 over the weekend and got the following worked out:

Ok, missiles... the devs seem to have taken a note from flight sims here...

The red diamond is "missile locked on", if they aren't locked on there will be a timer instead showing the lock time remaining. If there isn't a red diamond, it won't work. It looks like the missiles lock on when the target is in the front arc of the fighter (not the cone, thats guns), not found a "missile range" indicator so far though.

Green missile means "permission to launch" red means "don't fire", you can toggle them.

Interceptors show their current target in the top right of their panel, if you're engaging a wing the interceptor will only launch against the target it's got, you can select the interceptor and set it's target by clicking on the hostile. Guns seem to fire on any hostile in the cone.

As a tip, hostile fighters and heavy fighters barrel roll, so try working you're interceptors in a pairs (one bait one flanker) and launching "from the side" (they'll barrel roll sideways and still be hit).

The mig isn't there to engage small stuff... they're there to carry 4 torps and knock out corvettes (torps have longer range than corvette guns so you can go in straight and bank away after launch with ab and usually survive), don't send them to dogfight fighters, they don't have cannons and get ripped apart.

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The mig isn't there to engage small stuff... they're there to carry 4 torps and knock out corvettes (torps have longer range than corvette guns so you can go in straight and bank away after launch with ab and usually survive), don't send them to dogfight fighters, they don't have cannons and get ripped apart.
The trick there is to load four Sidewinders, but hold back three of them in the pre-combat pause. Let the first missile launch and get a little down-range from the MiG (about one grid-square seems to work for me), then hit 'space' to pause combat and hit the other three missile icons, ripple-firing all three of them at once. If you time it right, the alien rolls away from the first missile, but he comes wings-level just in time to get the other three shots right in the face. Good fight: good night. ;)
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It is a little counter-intuitive to people who have learned that "red is dead", meaning safeties off and ready to fire, but once you understand the thought behind it, the current system actually works really well.

I always have 1 sidewinder in the flight set to fire at will. This not only tells me when I am in missile range, but also will set off the barrel roll for a hostile fighter. Then as soon as he flips, I'm launching one or two more to take him out. :)

Scouts and higher don't seem to roll, so I just determine what it takes to ALMOST knock them out, and set that many missiles to fire at will. I'll finish them off with my guns to make them crash.

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It is a little counter-intuitive to people who have learned that "red is dead", meaning safeties off and ready to fire, but once you understand the thought behind it, the current system actually works really well.

"Green is go" "red is stop" ... where does "red is dead" come from?

Yeah there's no range indicator on the missiles unfortunately. You can work it out easily enough though - if the missile is locked and hasn't fired, you're not in range. If it has fired, you are :)

Simples, I like it! lol

The only issue with "use lots of missiles" against fighters is when you're going against a fighter wing of 3, you haven't got that many missiles (or do you guys use all migs?). At least with flanking you can maneuver to hit a fighter with sidewinders so they break off and free up one interceptor to kill the fighters pursuing the bait.

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The only issue with "use lots of missiles" against fighters is when you're going against a fighter wing of 3, you haven't got that many missiles (or do you guys use all migs?). At least with flanking you can maneuver to hit a fighter with sidewinders so they break off and free up one interceptor to kill the fighters pursuing the bait.
Assuming you're not packing alenium warheads, a 3-v-3 fight takes a fair bit of micromanaging. You need to bring multiple fighters of your own, of course.

In the initial phase, select each fighter and set a waypoint that splits the flight in multiple directions - that'll let you tell which UFO is paired up on which fighter. (You can use each fighter's afterburner to stagger the timing of the merges between each fighter/UFO pair.) Once you've drawn the aliens a little apart, re-select each fighter's opponent to accept battle. Make liberal use of the pause function to get the timing of your missile-launches right. Each fighter launches a 'Winder to force its UFO into an evasive roll, fires the second to score a hit as he levels out, then goes in with guns to finish the job. Naturally, any fighter that kills its opponent quickly turns to engage another with its guns.

You could also switch up targets - have Fighter #1 ignore UFO #1 from the start of the fight and go after UFO #2 or #3 instead, and so forth - but given the current state of the AI, each UFO is fixated on killing its given target, so trading targets that way would be complicated, risky, and quite possibly a recipe for disaster.

Edited by Death by Chains
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